


Blood On My Name

by theboywantscoffee



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Diving into Five's alcohol and coffee addictions, Hurt No Comfort, Nightmares, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy-centric, The Handler is an awful human being
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28721181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboywantscoffee/pseuds/theboywantscoffee
Summary: Sleep is unattainable.He chases after it in vain night after night. But each time he catches it and holds on for longer than a few minutes, his own subconscious decides to rear its ugly head on him. His dreams don’t tend to be creative or eccentric. They aren’t anything that he doesn’t know already. They’re all the same recycled images and thoughts that plague his mind on a daily basis, only when he’s asleep they become a living nightmare.---A collection of non-linear snippets taking place during Five's time working for the Commission.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	Blood On My Name

Five learns very quickly that the Commission likes to put on the guise of caring for their employees while keeping it as superficial as possible. He doesn’t put in much effort to scrutinize the employment contract when he signs it, instead giving the Handler a quick flick of his eyes before taking the pen from her red tipped fingers and scribbling his initials and name as needed. He doesn’t care about his pension or commission based salary or overtime or healthcare plans. None of that matters when he knows his contract will be broken prematurely when he is ready. 

What does matter, however, is the unlimited supply of surprisingly high grade coffee offered to all staff. The perk of being able to travel to any time or place with the assistance of an innocuous brief case, he supposes.

It’s a sensible decision. Keep the employees fueled and jittery and they’ll continue to provide their services at the highest production rate, even when increased piss break time is factored in. They keep his company provided lodgings well stocked. There are different blends offered along with a variety of sweetening and dairy agents. The first cup he tries in the beginning nearly makes him vomit. The creamer is too heavy and it curdles in the stomach he is still trying to acclimate to real food again. It’s left abandoned on the counter while he blinks to the bathroom to dry heave. 

The second cup he tries black. It’s bitter on his palate and makes his nose wrinkle, but it’s tolerable. He ends up finishing the entire cup and soon after he feels the effects of it take place. 

Five decides that he likes coffee.

\---

His attempts at sleep become a fucking joke.

Initially, Five blames it on everything other than the actual problem at hand. The bed is too soft. His blankets, too heavy and restricting. The room can’t get dark enough but it’s also too damn _loud_. The soft electronic buzzing of the alarm clock beside the bed drives him nearly mad and he promptly rips its cord out of the wall his first night there. There’s little he can do about the whirring of traffic nearby. The sounds of car and truck engines zooming by is periodically cut up by the screaming sirens and alarms of emergency vehicles. When this happens too often he grimaces, rolls over to flick his lamp on, and returns to his work until the sun rises. 

As much as Five doesn’t want to admit it, he knows the real reason he can’t sleep is because of what happens when he does finally manage to drift off.

\---

Combat training at the Commission is a grueling experience and not because of the physical work itself. He might be a bit rusty and in need of some polishing, but Five is an adept and resourceful fighter. While other new hires struggle with particular aspects of their sessions, he excels in all of them. Weapons, hand to hand combat, stealth, defensive tactics. His father had made sure to sculpt Five along with most of his siblings into well rounded combatants and the evidence of this is clear when he excels where others fail. 

The trying part is dealing with his fellow trainees.

Five quickly finds out on his first day of training that people are… difficult. Confusing. Impulsive. _Loud_. He can’t stand it. When they take their initial break for water they just want to _talk_ and somehow the conversation becomes geared towards him. It turns out that Five has quite a reputation at the Commission and there is nary a single person, trainee or old time employee, who isn’t privy to his past. They interrogate and demand answers from him that they are certainly _not_ entitled to and it doesn’t take long for him to snap. He blinks without thought or restraint, appearing before and shoving the main verbal assailant against the wall, the sharp blade of Diego’s dagger pressed flush against his neck.

The man flounders. The color seeps from his face and his mouth flaps. Five sneers and leans so close to the man that he can smell the wretched stench of his garlic riddled lunch. Everyone around them watches, all too stunned and filled with morbid curiosity as to what Five is about to do next to try to stop the scene from unfurling before them. 

“Ask me _one more_ question, speak _one more_ stupid fucking word to me, and I’ll take you on a little joy ride to the apocalypse myself and leave you there. Give the Commission a spin off series until you either kill yourself with your own ineptitude or on purpose.” He pushes the blade’s edge further into the man’s flesh, just enough that a thin line of red beads along it. The action elicits a gasp from the man and Five’s lips pull back tighter with disdain. “My money is on the latter. What do you say?”

The other trainees don’t speak to Five after that, let alone make eye contact with him outside of sparring. He finds training much more bearable. 

\---

“A _tracker?”_

“Yes Five, a tracker. Standard Commission protocol and,” - there’s a pause while she takes another bite of massaman curry, “- if you’d actually read your contract you would have seen it in the itty bitty fine print you signed off on. Really, I don’t understand the fuss you're making. Everyone has one.”

“ _Everyone_ ,” Five echoes and she hums a ‘mm-hmm’ in response while she chews. His fingers twitch and he works his jaw furiously. White hot rage courses through him and settles in the form of potential energy in his muscles and bones. If he lacked even an _inkling_ of self restraint right now, he would swiftly take care of her and anyone else in this facility in less than a minute. A quick scan of the room reveals it is riddled with endless weapon options. A decorative light fixture clinging to the wall would create a good amount of blunt force trauma to the head if swung appropriately. A broken leg to a chair could splinter in just the right way to create a sharp enough point to pierce the soft tissue of the abdominal cavity. An uncapped pen to the jugular may not be swift but perhaps he isn’t really looking for swift. 

Five looks at her through narrowed eyes and there’s a challenge in his tone when he asks, “Even _you_ , then?”

The Handler laughs at that. “Oh don’t be silly, of course _I_ don’t. It’s for you worker bees out gallivanting in the field, not us desk jockeys. Higher ups always know where to find us. It’s you,” - another bite of food and then she’s speaking through a stuffed mouth, - “temporal assassins that could be anywhere in the timeline we have to keep an eye on. Can’t risk one of you going rogue, can we?”

“No.” Five’s jaw is clenched, his teeth grit together. He gives her an acerbic smile. “No, I suppose not.”

“Good! I knew I could rely on you to understand how we go about things here, Five. Now...” She pushes her plate aside, wipes her mouth with a napkin, and rifles through a drawer beside her. “... that your health checks out and you’ve filled out a bit, we can start discussing your training which will take place over the next five to seven months, depending on your progress of course. You’ll be starting with the tedious bit first I’m afraid, but within the next two weeks you’ll be transferred with the other trainees to…”

Five stops listening. He isn’t even aware of the dull ache pulsing from his right forearm with each beat of his heart. He watches the Handler as she talks and talks and _talks_ , and her name crawls to the second slot in his list, right after whoever the fuck causes the end of the world.

\---

Sleep is unattainable. 

He chases after it in vain night after night. But each time he catches it and holds on for longer than a few minutes, his own subconscious decides to rear its ugly head on him. His dreams don’t tend to be creative or eccentric. They aren’t anything that he doesn’t know already. They’re all the same recycled images and thoughts that plague his mind on a daily basis, only when he’s asleep they become a living nightmare.

Tonight it’s the worst of the worst.

Ash and smoke billows about the air around him, air that’s far too hot and far too tainted. Each breath is met with resistance as his lungs actively try to reject the pollution he gulps down through cracked lips. He’s aware of the all too familiar thick layer of filth on every bit of exposed flesh, a feeling that makes him want to claw at himself to get rid of it. Wind howls through the skeletons of the once grand offices and apartment buildings surrounding him and flames crackle and snap in their shadows. 

It’s _always_ this. 

Five goes through the motions that he remembers all too well. He walks through a crudely made path before him, swiping large rocks and debris from it with his feet so the cargo toted behind him can get through. He walks through the wasteland until the sight of a body catches his eye and then another. And then _another_. The wagon handle drops from his hand and Dolores (though she wasn’t Dolores just yet) watches him approach the figures in the rubble.

At the time he hadn’t been sure right away who they were. He had had his suspicions, yet nothing had been confirmed and that lack of affirmation provided him with a small glimmer of hope. But this time he does. And despite having knowledge of the corpses’ identities this time around, his legs continue to carry him towards them.

His family. His brothers. His sister. 

_Dead_. 

The image, though dreamt of hundreds of times before, _thousands_ of times before, still manages to tear the air from his lungs and pierce through his chest like a twisting blade. It’s all the same. It never changes. It _usually_ never changes. 

Five can’t stop himself as he walks through the scene - he never can. He’s on autopilot as he relives those early moments that are cut so vividly into his mind. It starts with Diego. Five drops down to a crouch and jostles his brother’s arm in an attempt to wake him, as if he doesn’t already know that it’s far too late for that. Something changes, though. Something that’s not ever in his usual by the books nightmare. This time when he retracts his hand from Diego, Diego’s vacant eyes follow his movements. They still retain the same empty look behind them, reminding Five that there is no life within the body that holds them, but they drag up to meet his horrified gaze. Diego’s mouth moves and he begins to speak, however the voice that leaves his bloodied lips is not that of Five’s brother but the cold, accented, and razor-sharp tone of their father. 

“ _I told you so_.”

Five feels his blood turn to ice and gasps, stumbling backwards and falling into the rubble. He’s unable to tear his eyes from his brother’s, even when Diego’s lips curl into a sinister smirk laced with poison and he repeats those cutting words once more.

“ _I told you so, Number Five._ ”

Five desperately scrambles to his feet, scraping his hands and knees against the bricks and rocks as he does so. His throat begins to close up and hot moisture wicks beyond the barrier of his eyelids. “No, no, no, _no…_ ” He looks between the remains of Allison and Luther only to find the same malicious twists on their lips, their eyes following him as he tries to get away.

_“I told you so. I told you so. I told you so...”_

He clamps his hands over his ears and backs away without turning to see where he’s going, tripping over his own feet as he does so. Even with the knowledge that he’ll only find Klaus’s body next, Five can’t stop himself from moving towards where he knows Klaus lies, his clumsy and trembling steps in sync with his ragged wheezes for air. 

Five never makes it to the final body this time. He manages to rouse himself awake by clenching his eyes shut while walking and shaking his head back and forth to _wake up wake up wake up!_ until he’s bolting upright from his hunched over position at his desk. His mouth gapes open in shallow attempts to catch his breath and beads of sweat trickle down his face. His eyelids flicker and when he looks around the dimly lit room to gain his bearings he becomes acutely aware of how his clothing clings to his wet skin.

In another world, during another time, Dolores would talk to him now. Assure him it’s all a dream, that _that_ never actually happened, that _he_ doesn’t know what ended up really happening to Five on that fateful day in 2002. 

But she’s not here. She hasn’t been for a while now. Five’s haggard attempts for air are met with silence that is cut up by the periodic zooming of traffic nearby. He gulps down a heavy swallow, closes his eyes, and leans back into his chair, waiting for his heart rate to slow. He’s not sure how long he stays like this before opening his eyes once more, turning his lamp on, and taking his pen in hand.

He just needs to get home. 

\---

Fives acquires a taste for alcohol rather quickly.

That’s not to say he didn’t have it before. Drinking and living on the apocalyptic remains of the earth go together like peanut butter and marshmallows, so he doesn’t really _develop_ his taste as much as he fleshes out his drinking habits (or problem, as Dolores would put it). He isn’t sure anymore if the coffee is the biggest perk of working in the Commission or the copious amounts of alcohol he can readily acquire. Whereas in the apocalypse he was stuck with whatever he could find (his face contorts in disgust remembering the intact Four Lokos he once stumbled upon and drank) now he can truly refine his taste and decide what he likes best.

As it turns out, Five is a whiskey or cabernet sort of man. He finds the browner of liquors and redder of wines to be particularly good at drowning the monsters that rage inside his mind most nights and learns that if he throws back four to five tumblers, he’ll pass out into a heavy and dreamless sleep.

So he develops a routine. 

\---

_You’re drinking too much. It’s becoming a bad habit._

“I am not drinking too much. And even if I were, which I’m _not_ , it’s only to sleep in this shit excuse for an apartment. I’ve got a big day tomorrow and I need to be able to focus.”

_Then why are you talking to me even when I’m not here?_

“Because - christ, because it’s easier to bounce ideas off of someone, alright? And you’re answering, aren’t you?”

_You’re talking to yourself, darling. I’m not here._

“Stop.”

_You are. And you’re becoming even more dependent on alcohol than before._

“I am _not_.”

_Then try going to bed without it._

“The bottle is already open. Maybe tomorrow.”

_You’re a terrible liar._

_\---_

After several months of recuperating and training, Five is tasked with his first hit.

It’s a mission that is pretty much done before he even has to travel to a new decade. The man he’s assigned to assassinate is elderly, riddled with health problems, and too obese to make a run for it even if Five gave him the chance. He paid little attention to his briefing or the folder given to him the night prior to his task, but he does recall that the man is some elected official in some bum fuck middle of nowhere town in Oklahoma 1983. 

A simple hit. An easy task. A mission to see if he’s really up for this, if he really has what it takes to tear away the lives of those who under any circumstance other than maintaining the timeline, aren’t bad people. 

A _pity_ mission.

Five doesn’t need their pity. He doesn’t _want_ it. 

There is no hesitation as he blinks into the man’s living room and pulls the trigger. It’s a clean shot right to the head. The man doesn’t ever see or hear Five and he dies with the Price is Right blaring on the TV before him, a bowl of salt and vinegar chips resting atop his ample gut.

Quick, clean, and efficient.

Five stashes the gun away, wipes the touch of blood off his face with a handkerchief, and blinks out. 

\---

The idea of a partner being sent out with Five on missions is brought up to him more than once. The Handler mentions it in passing during their weekly meetings in the beginning, a proposition that is met with scathing annoyance and an assertive, “I don’t need a partner. They’ll only slow me down,” each time.

It’s only after a mission that unexpectedly results in Five slaughtering a room of nine armed guards with nothing more than his bare hands and a gun with all of two bullets in the chamber that she stops bringing the idea up.

“My my, you really are exceeding our expectations, Five,” she coos at him when he returns with wet spots of blood that isn’t his staining both his clothing and skin. She circles her desk and slinks towards him like a fox creeping towards a hare, gives her thumb a swipe across her tongue, and wipes at his cheek. The action makes his skin itch and jaw clench.

“You give our body disposal units a lot of work you know,” she comments with a light tap of her finger to his chest. “But that’s no matter. You get your work done faster than any of your peers which is ideal because you do know how we _loathe_ doling out over time. You’re proving to be our most accomplished field agent.” 

He mulls her words over like he’s trying to swallow soured milk. He returns to his lodgings later, makes a pot of coffee, and works furiously on his calculations straight through until the next day’s sunrise. 

\--

The days drag on. 

When he has missions he completes them as quickly as possible. Five doesn’t like wasting time dabbling around in years and decades where he doesn’t belong, especially when he can be focusing that time and energy towards figuring out his way home. He executes his hits without hesitation or mercy, opting for weapons that get the job done as speedily as possible. 

The time he has free from work requirements is spent in his apartment pouring over notepads and books. He brews multiple pots of coffee on those days, none of which goes to waste, and stays up until he passes out mid equation. Five finds that he can usually sleep for about an hour or so like this before the nightmares kick in, at which point he rouses himself awake and either puts on another pot or downs whiskey straight from the bottle until his vision blurs.

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

\---

Just a little bit longer. He’s almost there he thinks, he _swears_.

“No, no, no, that’s not right…” Five talks to himself a lot when he works - an old habit, he supposes. He scrubs at his forehead with the heel of his palm, squinting at the numbers and figures before him, trying to reason with them to just… _show_ him what he’s missing.

They don’t. They never do. He sighs. The silence he sits in is deafening. 

He misses Dolores. 

\---

“She’s… she’s just a kid.”

“Yes she is Five, quite the astute observation. She is also an anomaly in the timeline.”

“She’s _ten._ ”

“I see you really have gotten a lot better at reading your case files. I’m impressed.”

“This is-.”

“Your _job_ , Five, and a rather cushy one if I do say so myself. Now I’m not sure what it is you’re looking for standing here and going on about the inconsequential details of your next mission, but I am quite busy and really just do not have the time for this. Get the job done and get back. Or don’t and you will be terminated. Capiche?”

“... _capiche_.”

\---

He hesitates briefly, _only_ briefly, before pulling the trigger. She dies in her sleep surrounded by bubblegum pink walls plastered with posters and magazine cut outs of spiky haired boy bands and with an array of stuffed animals around her. 

It reminds him of Allison. 

\-- 

That night Five drinks himself into absolute black out oblivion. He wakes up the next morning spewing the contents of his stomach into the toilet until there is nothing left but dry heaves and with a headache so splitting he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to jump again.

He spends the rest of his day nursing his hangover and drifting in and out of a fretful sleep on the bathroom floor.

\---

Days drag into weeks which stretch into months and then, well, he stops keeping track of the days after that and tears the calendar off his wall. All it does is frustrate him further to fixate on the time he has spent in vain attempting to get back home, on the time he has spent without Dolores to help him through this shit show that is his employment at the Commission.

One late evening he returns from a mission to find a white cardboard box on the kitchen counter tied up neatly with red and white twine. Green eyes narrow at it, indignation bubbling up by its presence which is an evident breach of his privacy and space. A small tag is tied to the string and he flips it over to reveal cursive penmanship he is all too familiar with. 

_A first year of employment well done, Five_. _Keep it up and there will be much bigger things in store for your future_. 

Five rips the tag off with one jerk of his hand and crumples it in his fist. He undoes the string, peels back a few strips of clear tape, and opens the box to reveal a large plain looking bundt cake dusted with powdered sugar. There is a moment's delay before the smell of the cake hits him. It’s pungent, overly sweet, overly _processed_ , and the odor riles a memory in him so vivid that his stomach immediately twists and he slams the lid shut before it actually makes him sick. 

He never told her of that near fatal run in with an expired Twinkie - he doesn’t tell her anything of his time back then. But he hears the murmurs at group meetings, he witnesses the stolen glances in his direction, and he very clearly recalls much of the part of his life that was watched like some fucked up reality show. Their entertainment at the expense of his survival. She is no idiot and he knows this choice is no coincidence but rather an additional slap to the already jarring insult of having worked for her - for _them_ \- for an entire _year_. 

It takes everything within him to keep him from swiping the box off the counter and hurling it into the wall. 

He _will_ put a bullet through her head some day. Through _all_ of their heads. 

\--

November in Dallas is far more bearable than Five anticipates. He assembles his rifle with ease, his hands moving deftly through the actions of fastening the pieces together like a secret handshake with an old friend. A pleasantly warm breeze stirs the air and rustles the trees above him. He partially listens to the radio that hangs from the fence nearby as it drones on about the day’s events. It’s Five’s biggest mission to date, yet not a single nerve wracks his body or rattles his chest. There were many others vying for this assignment, shamelessly going above and beyond to lick the boots of the corporate big wigs in hopes of obtaining their good graces. Five wasn’t at all surprised when the file was placed in his hands or by the envious glares shot at him from his colleagues.

The targets don’t matter to him. Presidents, tyrants, philosophers, civilians. It’s all just a job. 

The magazine clicks into place and he assumes his position peering over the edge of the picket fence. Squinting through the scope he locates his target with ease and follows the car as it rolls along the road lined with fanatical people. The crowds are dense in every sense of the word, waving and cheering in hysterical attempts for the president’s attention. All it would take is a small slip up of his aim and his bullet could easily lie in the head of a civilian and not his actual target.

The thought almost makes him scoff. 

Five’s _never_ misses.

He follows the president’s head through the scope, watching him and the first lady wave at the crowds surrounding them. Five needs them to get at least within a hundred meters before he can confidently take the shot and he estimates that in roughly another thirty seconds they’ll be at that point. 

He’s not sure why, but Dolores always enters his thoughts right before he executes a kill. Perhaps, if she were actually here with him, she would speak to him with disapproval heavy in her tone over the nature of his work. Or perhaps it would be the opposite and she would offer him only words of encouragement because _of course_ Dolores would understand the things he has had to do to try to get back to his family. Even if one of those things was leaving her behind in the end of the very same world she saved him from. 

Five always found her smile placating and her words grounding, and even now just the thought of her voice eases the ever present guilt of abandoning her coiled within him. It's been a long time since he heard her speak to him, yet a distant memory of her echoes in his mind as he trails the president through his scope. 

_You need to double check your work more. There’s no sense in moving forward when you aren’t certain of what you already have._

Five’s brow furrows. Of all the things she wants to say to him now, those are her words of wisdom? He shakes his head. Dolores would always say things like that and in his youth, he would always haughtily reply that _he’s_ the one doing the math, not her. 

_Even you are fallible, darling. Perhaps the answer is simply in a place you’ve overlooked._

And that’s a ridiculous notion. Five knows the math. He has worked on it for what he can only imagine adds up to years worth of his time. He has committed it to memory forward and backwards. Hell, he could recite the entirety of it out loud if needed. He knows the math. It _always_ checks out. It…

It…

Five pauses.

He blinks. He pulls his face away from the scope of his rifle, his mind racing through the calculations he has memorized down to the decimal point. And it all makes sense. It always does. It all…

He freezes on a small number that suddenly does _not_ make sense. 

His gun falls to the ground and he pulls Vanya’s book out from the inside of his coat. Somewhere far away he hears the radio going on about how the police are handling the excitement of the crowds. He’s losing seconds on his mission, but he doesn’t care. He flips through the pages of his book fervently, his finger tracing along lines of equations scrawled between the text, looking for his answer, looking for _Dolores’_ answer and…

… and he finds it. 

_She_ finds it.

His eyes dart feverishly across the text once, twice, three times over in attempts to make sense of the number, but he can’t. With each mental calculation he gets a number, the _same_ number, and it’s different from what he has written down. The original number is so close, yet still so achingly wrong. 

Dolores is right. 

It’s a simple slip up of his math, of his most _basic_ math, and there is both mad laughter and a scream caught just beyond his lips at the idea that _this_ is what has held him back for so fucking long. For years. This. A decimal point. 

A fucking _decimal point_. 

Five forces himself to move beyond the grueling irony of this mistake, because Dolores found the answer that he could not and her answer gives him the ability to move forward again. 

To get home. 

Five’s breath catches with the realization. 

Without another thought he eagerly tugs at his powers and feels their winding tendrils reaching backwards through time, clawing and dragging their way back to the timeline he left so very long ago. His heart pounds wildly. He feels it against his chest, his throat, and at his fingertips. He tears through the fabric of time over and over and grabs onto the first familiar image that appears of his siblings. It’s the version of them he saw years ago, decades ago, taller and aged and alive. 

They’re _alive_.

Sweat beads along his forehead. Somewhere, distantly, gunshots are fired. 

None of it matters. He just needs to focus to pull himself backwards to the time where he belongs. 

To home. 


End file.
